PRAGOTI

May 25th marked African Liberation Day. In the words of brother Elombe Brath, Chairman of Patrice Lumumba Coalition, "African Liberation Day is a symbolic day to mobilize the broad masses of African and all progressive peoples around the issue of totally liberating the African continent and those African people still remaining in colonial bondage or under other oppressive regimes and repressive conditions".

May 25, 2008 was the 45th anniversary of the founding of the Organization of African Unity in 1963, by the then independent 32 African states. Coincidentally, it was May 25,1958, exactly 50 years ago, that Cuban revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro won a decisive victory after 74 days of intense combat against soldiers of the Batista dictatorship.

That victory signaled a strategic turnaround in the war that would eventually revolutionize Cuba. Later on Cuban Internationalist forces would assist African peoples in ways that no other nation on earth has ever duplicated or surpassed.